Toronto:

This year saw the passing of veteran actor Keith Dinicol at age 69 and of renowned director Majdi Bou-Matar at age 47. Dinicol was known as a mainstay at the Stratford Festival playing more than 100 roles during his 29 seasons there where he was especially loved for comedy. Born in Lebanon, Bou-Matar was the Artistic Director and founder of the MT Space in Kitchener and of the IMPACT Festival, a biennial international theatre festival. A fierce advocate for the unheard voice, Bou-Matar brought productions from South America, Africa and the Middle East to Waterloo Region, watching hours of play footage to decide what could enrich the local community and those who travelled to the area to see theatre unavailable anywhere else.

Another cause for sadness is the demise of NOW Magazine. NOW was the best source of listings for Toronto, not merely in theatre but in movies, comedy, concerts and virtually any other event. It was the most influential voice during the Toronto Fringe Festival. Glenn Sumi, writing about theatre for NOW since 1997 and one of the most respected arts critics in Toronto, continued working for the magazine without pay since April this year. Days ago he launched his own website, So Sumi (www.goaheadsumi.com), so at least his voice will still be heard. Meanwhile, the number of outlets for arts news and reviews and the number of arts commentators with decades of experience continues to decline.

Because of travel and illness (Covid, even after two shots and two boosters), I saw and reviewed only about half of what I used to do before the pandemic. Another impediment was certain Indigenous playwrights who refused to allow non-Indigenous theatre critics to review their plays. Theatre is about encouraging discussion, not squelching it. Thus good work passed by unexamined.

In alphabetical order here is my list of the ten best productions in Toronto I reviewed in 2022. As usual, I have excluded productions that have previously appeared on this list.

The First Stone by Donna-Marie St. Bernard, New Harlem Productions & Great Canadian Theatre Company, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. St. Bernard created her finest play to date with this incisive study of the use of child soldiers in war, a reprehensible practice used around the world, not merely in Uganda where the play is set. St. Bernard and director Yvette Nolan have mastered the techniques of Brecht’s Epic theatre so that we always keep the political questions of the action in mind despite the emotional pull of some of the extremely unsettling content. If you missed the play in Toronto, you can see it at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa April 11-23, 2023.

The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca, translated by David Johnston, Aluna Theatre & Modern Times Stage Company, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Following their triumph with Lorca’s Blood Wedding in 2015, Aluna and Modern Times teamed up again to present a fiery version of another masterpiece by the Spanish playwright. A diverse cast under Soheil Parsa’s insightful direction highlighted the universality of Lorca’s tragedy about authoritarianism and hierarchy and their malign consequences.

Indecent by Paula Vogel, David Mirvish & Studio 180, CAA Theatre. Vogel has written a magisterial study of the rise, fall and second rise of a Yiddish play covering the years 1906 to 1953 while placing the play, its creator and its performers in the political, sexual, religious and historical context of the times. It is an irony of ironies that a play praised all over Europe should be condemned as indecent and worse by a rabbi in New York City who had the production closed down. Joel Greenberg directed the technically challenging work with clarity, vigour and passion.

Is God Is by Aleasha Harris, Obsidian Theatre Company, Necessary Angel Theatre Company & Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street Theatre. Harris’s reimagining of the Jacobean revenge tragedy tightly directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu was an incendiary drama that conjured up a terrifying contemporary Black vision of a world that has lost its moral compass. If you missed it in Toronto, you can see it at the NAC in Ottawa February 9-18, 2023.

O Christmas Tea by Aaron Malkin & Alastair Knowles, James & Jamesy, Jane Mallett Theatre. Toronto knows Malkin and Knowles as James and Jamesy from their hit Fringe shows. O Christmas Tea was the first full-length show they toured throughout Ontario, a show in which the duo created a fanciful world and somehow, through a magic all their own, transformed an audience of sober adults into a theatre of giddy children willing to play any game the two suggested.

our place by Kanika Ambrose, Cahoots Theatre & Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Passe Muraille. Ambrose’s look at the dangers faced by illegal immigrants in today’s Canada is a sure-fire candidate for theatrical breakthrough of the year. With a rigorously pursued parallel structure, Ambrose charts the possibilities, both unhappy, that face her two main characters. Though acting in an invented dialect, Virgilia Griffith and Sophia Walker under Sabryn Rock’s sympathetic direction fully convey the extent of their characters’ hope and heartbreak.

Public Enemy by Olivier Choinière, translated and adapted by Bobby Theodore, Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street Theatre. Choinière’s play is a mind-boggling take on the standard “dinner-goes-wrong” play so beloved of American playwrights. He stages the first scene of overlapping arguments twice from different points of view and has us side with those who seem the most rational in the family only to find they were merely the most authoritarian. Choinière has blended a critique of genre with a critique of society in brilliant fashion, Excellent direction, acting and design signalled Public Enemy as one of the greatest Canadian plays so far this century.

Solstice d’hiver by Roland Schimmelpfennig, translated by Camille Luscher & Claire Stavaux, Groupe de la Veillée, Théâtre Prospero & Théâtre français de Toronto, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs. Soulpepper was meant to have presented the Canadian premiere of this play in 2020 before Covid scuppered its plans. As it happened three Francophone companies won that honour. Using a simple Christmas party as its set-up, Schimmelpfennig brilliantly explores how ordinary people can succumb to a fascist ideology – surely one of the most important questions of the present day.

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Liisa Repo-Martell, Crow’s Theatre, Streetcar Crowsnest. Of the many Uncle Vanyas I’ve seen, this production directed by the ever-insightful Chris Abraham now counts as the best. The set, the in-the-round staging, the lighting, the sound all contributed to the production’s success while Abraham drew finely nuanced multilayered performances from a superb multi-ethnic cast. The play felt like an exquisite tone poem on the theme of perseverance despite the crush of hopelessness.

Wildfire by David Paquet, translated by Leanna Brodie, Factory Theatre. Paquet’s play has the structure of a generational tragedy, but it is also farcical and absurd and makes extraordinarily witty use of doubling. The action under Soheil Parsa’s precise direction suggests that the curse that dogs the eccentric figures of Paquet is fate that all of us share. The play was staged with such conviction it already feels like a classic.

On the other hand ...

The Shark is Broken by Ian Shaw & Joseph Nixon, Sonia Friedman, presented by Mirvish Productions, Royal Alexandra Theatre. Notwithstanding the rafts of four- and five-star reviews it received in Britain, this import proved to be the most boring play to be seen on a Mirvish stage in decades. The play purports to give a behind the scenes look at the filming of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, yet does nothing but show how the three main actors waste their time while waiting for the mechanical shark to be repaired. Watching laundry tumble in the machine would be more exciting.

Outside Toronto:

This year at least ten productions (in alphabetical order) seen outside Toronto deserve special mention:

Chicago by John Kander & Fred Ebb, Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford. The 1970s original staging and the 1990s redo left me cold, but Donna Feore’s production of Kander and Ebb’s second-greatest hit finally made the piece not only work but blow the roof off the Festival Theatre. The storyline was finally clear and Feore’s choreography more athletic and extrovert than ever before. Jennifer Rider-Shaw was a sizzling Velma, Dan Chameroy a suave but sleazy Billy Flynn and Steve Ross a sympathetic sad sack Amos.

Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka, Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford. With this play by a Nigerian Nobel Prize-winner, Stratford finally staged a work outside its traditional sources of Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Tawiah M’Carthy’s staging may have been over-exuberant but he proves through the utterly committed performances he drew that Soyinka’s play is undeniably a masterpiece of world drama.

The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey, Blyth Festival, Harvest Stage, Blyth. Blyth’s production of this Canadian classic proved to be a major triumph. The utterly realistic acting Gil Garratt drew from his cast matched if not exceeded the humour, sensitivity and emotion of the original while the outdoor location, Steve Lucas’s multi-layered set and the use of live music raised the level of the play to a profound exploration where truth lies in the complex relations of memory to reality and fiction.

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry, Drayton Entertainment, St. Jacobs Country Playhouse, St. Jacobs. With an ideal cast and Marti Maraden as director, Drayton Entertainment presented a production of this favourite that could not be bettered. The detail that Donna Belleville, Cassel Miles and Randy Hughson gave their characters and the way that the animosity between Belleville’s Daisy and Miles’s Hoke eroded and turned into friendship was simply beautiful to watch.

The Foursome by Norm Foster, Norm Foster Theatre Festival, Sawmill Golf Course, Fenwick. After the Foster Festival’s brilliant staging of Foster’s The Ladies Foursome in 2021, it was only natural that it would stage Foster’s earlier golf-themed work the same way – i.e., on actual golf courses in St. Catharines with the audience seated in golf carts. The Foursome may not be as deep as its distaff follow-up, but it is an unusual “comedy” in showing how a group of men who gather to celebrate their friendship watch their group dissolve and wonder if they really ever were friends at all. Director Jamie Williams had the full measure of the changing dynamics of the play.

Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson, Shaw Festival, Studio Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake. Wilson’s play, the first of his 10-play series on the Black experience in the US, received the most powerful production of any play at the Shaw Festival this year. Under director Philip Akin the actors were completely submerged in their characters and the play’s transition from realism to mysticism was smooth and profoundly moving. The action caught the audience so tightly in its grip that we felt as cleansed as does the play’s symbolic figure Citizen. One deeply hopes the Shaw will let Akin guide us through the rest of Wilson’s monumental cycle.

Girls & Boys by Dennis Kelly, Here For Now Theatre Company, Falstaff Family Centre, Stratford. The Here For Now Theatre Company that produces small-scale theatre at the same time as the Stratford Festival’s expensive large-scale productions, had a major hit with this solo show featuring a breath-taking performance by HFNT’s Artistic Director Fiona Mongillo. The show begins as a satiric comedy on married life but takes sharp turn to darkness and horror. If you missed this fantastic, disturbing piece of theatre in Stratford, you can see it at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto January 26 to February 12.

Room by Emma Donoghue, Grand Theatre, Covent Garden Productions & Mirvish Productions, Grand Theatre, London. Donoghue’s stage adaptation of her best-selling novel premiered in London before travelling to Toronto. Alexis Gordon gave a stellar performance as a woman who has become a mother in captivity and brings up her children not to suspect there is any world outside the room where her abductor keeps her imprisoned. As Gordon’s character looks for escape, director Cora Bissett has the tension mount to excruciating heights.

White Christmas by Irving Berlin, Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake. White Christmas proved to be the most enjoyable musical the Shaw Festival has presented in over a decade. As she did with Berlin’s Holiday Inn in 2019, director Kate Hennig encouraged the cast to make real people of their sketched-in characters and Allison Plamondon’s choreography was her most imaginative ever capturing the elegance of the period and bursting out with fantastic tap numbers. The Shaw is sure to revive it in a future season.

Wingfield – The Complete Works by Dan Needles, Douglas Beattie Theatrical Productions Ltd, Stratford Perth Museum, Player’s Backstage, Stratford. The Stratford Perth Museum persuaded Rod Beattie for the first (and the last) time to perform all seven of Dan Needles’s Wingfield plays in chronological order over the course of seven consecutive Sundays. This epic experience proved that these solo shows are classics of Canadian drama, that Rod Beattie is a national treasure and that Douglas Beattie is the ideal person to shape this extraordinarily detailed seven-chapter tale of life in rural Ontario.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Uncle Vanya: Anand Rajaram as Waffles, Eric Peterson as Alexandre, Bahia Watson as Sonya, Tom Rooney as Uncle Vanya, dtaborah johnson as Maria, Shannon Taylor as Yelena and Carolyn Fe as Marina. © 2022 Dahlia Katz.

Public Enemy: Rosemary Dunsmore as Elizabeth, Jonathan Goad as James, Michelle Monteith as Melissa, Maja Vujicic as Olivia, Matthew Edison as Daniel and Amy Rutherford as Suzie. © 2022 Dahlia Katz.

Gem of the Ocean: Nathan Judah as Citizen Barlow, David Alan Anderson as Solly and Monica Parks as Aunt Ester. © 2022 Emily Cooper.